From Cover Drives to Contracts: How Smriti Mandhana Became India’s Most Marketable Cricketer

“She heard me out without interrupting, and then told me, ‘You know, you remind me of Paresh Rawal’.” He laughed a tight laugh that didn’t reach his eyes. “It’s what any sports marketer would do!” he recalls with one right guffaw now. To be fair, it’s what Jerry Maguire would do.

But that wickedly witty woman, who has broken several batting records this year, is a World Cup winner now, a key asset in the agency’s repertoire. With her multiple feats as India opener, as RCB captain, she will rank in the world’s Top 25 female sporting earners, boasting of close to 17 brands even before she nailed the big world title.

Smriti Mandhana, who has broken several batting records this year, is now a World Cup winner. (Express Photo by Narendra Vaskar)

Smriti has been, what in brand-speak, is a happy aberration: she quietly sidled into the male-dominated product segments of car oil, where she took over from MS Dhoni, and insurance, a decision still largely taken by males, and her long-standing association with a Korean automobile. “She’s got poise and elegance, speaks well and has a mind of her own. Even at 21, she wasn’t frivolous,” says Mishra, adding that her tangible endorsement value is on the upswing at 29. When she started, she earned Rs 30-40 lakh per brand, going into the World Cup, she commanded around Rs 2-3 crore, with a surge in valuation expected post the title.

But while Smriti did those commutes from Sangli to Pune, where she upskilled while getting into the Indian team and has now erected a private nets facility in her home’s backyard, she is helped by her family and personal coach, Anant Tambvekar, to never forget that cricket is at the core of all the fame and luxe white-gold watch bands that define her images.

Coach Tambvekar had once bluntly told Smriti to not blindly copy Kumar Sangakkara’s elegant left-handed strokeplay. “Develop your own style, yaar,” he is known to have told her when she played a pull. While smoothening out her backfoot play to point region, and late-cut, he was still angry at her attempt to ape Sourav Ganguly and Sangakkara many years ago and getting tangled in timing.

Smriti took to cricket following her elder brother Shravan, also a leftie and a leg-spinner. Tambvekar was persuaded to coach her alongside, and the former fast bowler trained that quiet girl, with wicked wit but insatiable appetite for perfection. She barely had friends beyond school and immersed herself into cricket. Respectful at most times, known for her calm cool temperament , the lid could blow once in a while. Tambvekar had once watched the Smriti volcano erupt.

“I’m a very good fielder, so I was always ensuring she devotes good time to fielding,” he remembers a normal training day. “She kept dropping high catches that day. And I happened to utter, ‘Kya ladki jaisa catch drop kar rahi tu?’ That’s it. She got so angry. She told me, ‘Waapis ladki bola toh dekhna!” The fury was at the connotation that women fielded poorly.

While Smriti’s timing on strokes was ethereal and her body language always confident, the coach had to find templates for everything from fitness to fielding that would fit a girl. They went up and down the stairs of Sangli’s Shivaji Stadium to improve endurance, shifted to Chintamanrao College, and started working on squats, but with just 3-4 games a year for women in 2012-13, it was tough to devise technique improvements till the coach got a hang of the women’s game.

It would slowly unfold over plates of canteen dosa morning and evening, as they trained in Sangli. The crux and crunch of the matter, Tambvekar realised, wasn’t that Smriti would struggle against faster bowling, for he was equipped to train her for that. “When I went and watched domestic games, I realised there was no speed in the bowlers operating back then, so she couldn’t use their pace. We lined up U12 boys bowlers, and I bowled offspin — over and round the wicket, with new ball and old. Later, it was about mastering the mental game, like Dhoni. It takes a long time to build that mindset because women didn’t play enough,” he explains.

Always aggressive in her batting style, Smriti set the rules by beginning to dominate domestic giants Indian Railways. At BKC in Mumbai once, her Maharashtra senior Anuja Patil, recalls, “Her aggressive batting is irrespective of conditions, bowlers and nature of wickets.” She carried that same assuredness into internationals, and has been on a century-spree over the last two years.

Smriti took to cricket following her elder brother Shravan, also a leftie and a leg-spinner. (Express Photo by Narendra Vaskar)

Tambvekar remembers the one time when she returned from a Sri Lanka tour, having struggled to get runs, and she landed at his nets in a desperate funk to regain her form. “We tried. The cover drive kept going to mid wicket. She broke down that day, and I told her the problem is mental, not of technique. She has enough talent, and can pierce the gaps, but a bad patch is a sign that she might be burnt out. I told her to sit at home for three days.” Sure enough, the timing whistled right back.

But it was after India’s last World Cup debacle in 2022, that something snapped about how things had dawdled. “For the last two years she has worked on her fitness regime, and almost has six-pack abs. She wanted the whole team’s fitness culture to change, but knew she had to first do it herself,” says Mishra. A cook accompanies her wherever she goes, and no outside food is eaten. At her Sangli nets, she would often start training at midnight, working on one small thing and train deep into the night.

Her stress busters are mobile games, and she is obsessively into gaming. Occasionally, though, her words can nerf an unsuspecting Jerry Maguire, to tell him he’s Safed Ramu or Teja. Humour completes Smriti.